STONE IMPLEMENTS. 13 



In the next more ancient, or Cave, period, of an age prior to the construction of 

 habitations for the living, or of receptacles for the dead, and in which the traces 

 of other and more advanced industries are but rare, the task of indicating their 

 antiquity falls mainly on the palaeontologist, and the fauna (sometimes of animals 

 extinct locally prior to either history or tradition, but whose remains are found in 

 indubitable association with these works of man) is his only certain guide the 

 more so, as sometimes the types of the implements found on the same spot take 

 a wide range, from those until lately supposed peculiar to the Drift, down to 

 those hitherto assigned to the earlier part of the Surface-period. 



In the earliest period that of the Drift the Archaeologist finds not the 

 slightest trace of other human industry to guide him ; and the work of the Palae- 

 ontologist is less determinate; it rests with the Geologist, by indicating the 

 changes which have occurred in the very land itself, to shadow out the period in 

 the dim distance of that far antiquity when these implements, the undoubted work 

 of human hands, were used and left there by primeval man. 



Similarity of Form in Stone Implements. Here it may not be amiss to remark 

 that, whilst the implements of stone in various countries, and in various periods, 

 differ much one from another, both in form and in skill of construction, and 

 whilst, in some countries, there are various grades, extending over various and 

 widely remote periods of time, there can yet be traced throughout the whole 

 world, from the very earliest to the very latest time, a marvellous coincidence 

 not merely in the simplest and most primitive, but also in the more complex types ; 

 and within a more limited but still wide range, both as regards time and distance, 

 there are, in the more highly finished forms, some most curious resemblances. 



In proof of the agreement between simple forms may be cited a lance-head of 

 obsidian, mounted on its shaft, and an unmounted one of flint, both from the 

 dominions of the same sovereign, wide apart in point of distance, but wider 

 still in point of time, the one still in use by the natives of New Caledonia ; the 

 other from the Valley of the Somme, left there by man when the Mammoth 

 yet existed there, when the river-level was seventy feet above its present bed, 

 and when it had not cut out the broad valley through which it now flows. (See 

 figs. 3 and 4, page 14.) 



In support of our remark as to the more complex forms, we may note an 

 instrument in use amongst the Polar Esquimaux for scraping skins, one of a 

 similar description from the Reindeer-caves of France, and another from the Drift 

 of St. Acheul. (See figs. 5, 6, 7, page 14.) 



